


Love in Retrograde

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Barebacking, Canon-Typical Violence, Champion Shiro (Voltron), Choking, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), Kissing, M/M, Mental Instability, Personality Swap, Search and Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26631517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: He is devastation dressed in Armageddon’s finest. The broken lip still spilling blood, the bruises blossoming like life’s dying gasps over his skin, brilliant purples and blues bursting along his cheek, over his jaw, right down the valley of his neck where the shadows put a touch of hell to their hue. Shiro rolls his head to the side, eyes flashing, the gray growing dark with thought. Reminding Keith of all the ways lightning could split the skies and scorch the earth, how a single strike could bring a man to his knees. But it’s the loaded-gun smile Shiro levels at him, just daring him to say what’s on his mind, that drops his heart to the dirt.[An alternate reality piece written for the Across Realities zine.]
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! This is the piece I wrote for the [Across Realities Zine](https://twitter.com/RealitiesZine), which explored Sheith in various different realities and was a real pleasure to be a part of! I've had this idea in my head for a time-jumping piece for a while but never got around to really writing on it until this opportunity presented itself. And it's definitely inspired by Starset's album _Vessels_ (have fun picking out the song references used throughout) as I've always had it in my head to write something to that one just as I had to their first one with Sheith as the basis.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story, and as usual, you can come yell at me over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/bymidnightflame)!

**Day 374**

He doesn’t struggle, and Keith almost finds that alarming. Rather, Shiro stands there, a lion surveying jackals, the amusement clear as rain in his gaze. He’s every bit the predator he once denied himself being. 

Revels in it. 

He is devastation dressed in Armageddon’s finest. The broken lip still spilling blood, the bruises blossoming like life’s dying gasps over his skin, brilliant purples and blues bursting along his cheek, over his jaw, right down the valley of his neck where the shadows put a touch of hell to their hue. Shiro rolls his head to the side, eyes flashing, the gray growing dark with thought. Reminding Keith of all the ways lightning could split the skies and scorch the earth, how a single strike could bring a man to his knees. But it’s the loaded-gun smile Shiro levels at him, just daring him to say what’s on his mind, that drops his heart to the dirt. 

“Hey there, hero.” 

**Day 1**

Of all the things he’s become acquainted with during his life, Keith never once thought the training room floor would have been one of them. Gray steel, or something like it (alien metals aren’t exactly his forte). Even the Garrison had training mats to protect them from the inevitable meetings between body and floor, but here with the Blade of Marmora, there is only the hard reality of failure as he crashes to the ground once more. 

“What are you fighting for?” 

Kolivan stands five feet away from him. His voice is level, as it always is, and his movements are impeccable. Fluid in the way that felines and common knowledge tend to be. Cats have claws. Earth’s sky is blue. And he is yet again staring up at the Blade’s commander from another failed assault against him. 

Gritting his teeth, Keith pushes himself back up to his feet. His body protests every second of movement, and somewhere, his brain tries to tell him that he likely has more bruises than clear skin at this point in time. 

Still, he keeps going. 

“Everything I’ve lost.” 

Something flickers in Kolivan’s gaze, a look Keith is also growing well acquainted with. Disappointment. Stemming from a very simple fact — that was not the answer Kolivan had been looking for... but it’s the only truth he knows. 

“Again.” 

This time, Keith ducks beneath the first swing of Kolivan’s fist. He barely misses the second as it glances against his ribs. And just when he thinks he has the opening he’s been spending all day trying to create, Kolivan’s knee introduces itself to his stomach and his whole world drowns in darkness. He awakens seconds later, coughing, his head ringing. 

“What are you fighting for?” 

The question bounces around in his head. Knowledge and loss. Pain feels like a thousand centipedes skittering through his insides, biting at nerve bundles and creating an incessant tapping with their feet that echoes in his chest and up into his head. 

Another cough sputters out of him as he forces himself to a sitting position. He breathes in, exhales through the hurt, and turns his gaze on Kolivan. 

“Everything I’ll regain.” 

The corner of Kolivan’s mouth twitches. He pulls his arms to his sides, sliding back into his fighter’s stance, and stares down at Keith. 

“Again,” he says. 

**Day 376**

How to become someone who isn’t you and yet is undeniably so? 

There’s a calmness to Shiro that is unnerving. He still looks like Shiro, still sounds like him, still _moves_ like him. But every glance given, every word spoken, every inch walked contains something else. Shiro paces around the confines of his cell, not like a caged lion denied its rightful place beneath the sun, but like a panther, shadow-bred and raised, knowing all systems will inevitably fail and that it has been born for moments just like that. 

To take advantage of the fissures that crack the surface. 

None of them know what to do with him. Not Allura, not the other Paladins, not even the Blades. 

What do you do with someone who is no longer himself but is still the same? 

Keith can’t help but watch from the viewing room, and when his eyes meet Shiro’s, he knows that all lost things are meant to be found, just as his lungs are meant to filter air. But the question remains: in finding Shiro, how much could he lose of himself along the way? 

**Day 43**

“That’s him! That’s... It’s Shiro! Can’t you see?!” 

They stand crowded around one of the control panels. Before them, a small device projects a screen, and currently running across it, a figure darting from one pillar to another as thin streams of red light follow in his wake. When they slow the video down, Keith can easily make out the white streak through black hair, the flash of purple along a mechanized right arm, and what appears to be some sort of projectile weapon firing at him. 

The roar of the crowd is deafening. 

“They’ve put him back into the gladiator fights,” Kolivan says. 

Within those words, Keith can hear the solemn precaution that always prefaces situations like this. Where the outcomes skirt along the borders of a grave, not quite five-foot deep yet, but deep enough, and hope still clings to the unpredictable nature of it all. 

“He’s still alive...at least, he was a week ago. That means I still have a chance of finding him.” 

Keith’s voice is like iron, sharpened to a fine cutting edge. 

Kolivan frowns at the screen as the images replay, with Shiro dodging each shot fired at him, the panic just barely visible on his features as the video zooms in. It’s imagining those things — the fear, the betrayal — that starts a time-bomb ticking inside of Keith’s heart. 

**Day 388**

They set up a table in one of the cells. It took four Blade members to carry it in, and after the second interrogation with Shiro, they had it bolted down to the floor. He sits there now, with his feet propped up on one corner of it, his right arm resting flat over the top. 

“No more questions for me?” 

Keith can’t stop looking at the thick band of metal around Shiro’s wrist. Beside him, Kolivan shifts. Another projection pops up on the opposite wall. Images flash in slow sequence, just enough time to get a good look at each before it dissolves and another pulls itself into being from the fading pixels. 

Shiro glances at each one, a smile playing across his mouth. 

The cut over his lip has almost faded, but his right cheek still has that sickly green hue that inevitably drowns out the blacks and blues of fresh bruises. He taps his fingers against the tabletop. All eyes — including Kolivan’s and Keith’s — fall to his hand. Though subtle, the attempt is obvious. Keith notes the way each finger strains as Shiro pushes back against the binding around his wrist. Just enough pressure to still the air in the room. 

And nothing more. 

As the corner of his mouth curls into a smirk, Keith hears the seconds ticking away inside of his head. A muffled sound, faint as distant thunder, but unmistakable. 

Shiro’s voice cuts into the silence once again. “I’ve told you this already. I don’t know them.” 

The screen keeps shuffling through the images of various faces. Kolivan unfolds his arms from across his chest and takes a step forward. He doesn’t look at him when he speaks, but Keith can feel the stab of his words nonetheless. 

“They were members of your Alliance. And you killed each one of them.” 

**Day 70**

He’s been out here for hours. 

Just that morning, the information had disseminated throughout the Blade’s network. There had been no sign of Shiro on the planet, the place pinpointed as his last known whereabouts. By the time their informant had reached the arena, everything was emptied — all cells devoid of any signs of life save for those left behind, of no further use for entertainment’s purposes, too worthless to transport as prisoners. 

Most would be lucky to survive their rescue. 

Even so, Keith scans the surrounding space, hoping that something inside of himself (or the Black Lion, alone there still in her hangar, just waiting) might respond to whatever frequency Shiro exists on. He drifts through his memories like a sailor willingly lost to the seas. Because sometimes, finding those missing elements requires handing over a part of yourself to the process. Keith uses his memories as a tether, though. 

After all, it’s hard to lose yourself when those memories are the very things cladding your will in iron. 

He sinks back into his seat, closes his eyes, and listens. There might be lightyears between them now, but just days ago, Shiro had been here, standing before the roar of the arena. He breathes in as his memory replays the images he had watched just hours before, of Shiro fighting again and again. Back straight as he faced the crowd. Then, the drop of his shoulders as his last opponent, some prehistoric-sized creature with fangs bigger than Shiro himself, fell to the ground and heaved out a bloody sigh. 

Tipping his head back, Keith turns off his communication channel, opens his mouth, and lets out a sob. 

**Day 400**

“Trying something new this time?” Shiro asks. He cants his head and surveys the area with all the nonchalance of someone entirely unconcerned about his current predicament. 

One would think being held prisoner by your own friends would warrant a different response. 

Shiro didn’t seem to think so. 

It’s a typical training room for the Blades that they’re standing in — him and Shiro. Gray walls. Gray flooring. A viewing port along the far wall that presents itself as a sheet of black ice, impenetrable to the eyes of those within the room. (Which can be something of a dangerous assumption—you never knew who was watching.) Faint white light filters in from above, leaving the edges of the room in shadow. 

Shiro stands at the center of it all. 

“It’s just me here,” Keith says, his voice even, his gaze locked on the man before him. There was a time he would have called Shiro the sun of his galaxy, small as his notion of space had been back when he was still part of the Garrison. Now, though... he’s more like a satellite gone rogue, taking in the universe as he sees fit and sending back distorted images, puzzle pieces for Keith to put back together and make something whole of him once more. 

The corner of Shiro’s mouth curves slightly, the gesture entirely indulgent. “Is that really the case?” 

Keith starts at those words but forces his eyes to stay on Shiro. He knows that Kolivan, as well as several other senior members of the Blades, are up there watching. He also knows that all of this is being recorded. To pick apart later on, searching for the smallest hints of betrayal. Keith knows he’ll replay tonight’s events inside of his head, over and over, until sleep takes him hostage. Even so, he nods. 

“Just you and me...” 

Shiro laughs at that, and as the sound dwindles down, he touches the tip of a canine tooth with his tongue. 

“Just like old times, huh?” 

It’s not Shiro’s voice that gives him away, but the look in his eyes, sharp and unrelenting, fixed unerringly on Keith’s face that drives the point right into his heart. Though they had been wrapped in laugher, those words had been an accusation, and Keith felt the sting of it acutely. 

_Keith, if I don’t make it…_

As he stands there, staring at Shiro, he knows that not everything had been lost, and yet... he still has so much more to lose. 

“Not exactly,” Keith replies. “But I’m here now...” 

“Then, let’s see how long that lasts.” 

**Day 101**

He’s sitting in the Black Lion, hoping against hope. 

The lights flicker inside the cockpit. The dashboard illuminates, then it all goes dark again. 

Keith continues to sit there, his hands clenching the arms of the pilot’s chair as a sledgehammer takes aim at his heart. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, something else shatters. A memory, maybe. Or that lock on his potential, the one Shiro kept trying to get him to pick open because Keith kept insisting he didn’t have the key. 

Why would he need to open that door when Shiro stood before him? 

He was everything this team needed. Everything this war could rely upon. 

And he’s still gone. 

So, Keith sits here, and there’s a bomb ticktickticking away in his chest, and still, he keeps hoping. 

**Day 410**

“Keith, you can’t keep doing this.” 

“Doing what exactly, Allura?” 

With an exhale, Allura turns to look back at the rest of the Paladins. They all stand in an arc behind her, each wearing the same sort of worry across their faces. Each reluctant to speak. 

Frustration kicks him in the gut, bringing a scowl to his lips. “Look. If I’m not needed here for a mission, then I’m heading back to the Blades...” 

“He’s messing you up, Keith...” 

Pidge. 

She’s staring at him like he’s more ghost than man, but when she speaks again, Keith realizes he’s not the one she’s afraid of. 

“Shiro isn’t... himself anymore. Every time you go in there with him, you come out worse than before.” 

Sometimes, it’s the monster you know that is clawing into your fears. 

“I think Pidge is right,” Hunk says, his voice soft, apologetic. He, at least, looks at Keith when he speaks. “I mean, sure, maybe there’s still something there to the guy, and I guess technically he _is_ Shiro, but... he’s not, you know? And the Blades are all Galra... maybe they’re better equipped for this one.” 

They’re all expecting him to agree, to see some sort of light like they’re the ones standing there, holding open the curtain, and all he has to do is take a look inside. See how the show is really being run. But all Keith can see is the endless night sky, red streaking across it as dreams burn up in the atmosphere like meteors that will never get the crash landings they promised. No devastation here, just the memory of a touch, a broken smile, and the jumpstart of his heart. 

_You can’t give up on yourself._

That moment he first came into existence. 

“Shiro never gave up on me... so, I’m not giving up on him.” 

**Day 130**

It’s an endless loop circling inside his head. The flash of images, one after the other, a sequence that ends unexpectedly only to start all over again. 

Keith tries to make sense of it. He pulls apart each moment, sifting through them as one does the ashes, looking for any trace of an ember still glowing. Something that speaks of the life that had once been. 

They’d arrived too late again, but a pattern has started to emerge. From one planet to another, the Galra force Shiro to fight, and just when they get enough operatives together to launch a rescue mission, he’s gone. Vanished into the unknown of space. Not that Keith can blame it entirely on a lack of manpower. There’s Voltron to think about as well, the obligations he has to keep a team together, even when his heart feels like it’s drifting about the universe untethered. 

He watches the video again. Shiro in the arena, no longer fighting against a variety of creatures but against their own rebel forces. Prisoner against prisoner. That’s not the moment Keith focuses on, however. No... there’s a split second where the camera had caught Shiro still locked behind the bars of his holding cell, apparently in the midst of an argument. A frantic jerk of his arm as he points into the arena, the twist of his lips as an answer is given, not to his liking. He then looks out across the field, his jaw clenched tight, then the screen goes black. 

When the video cuts back on, it’s completely out of focus, but the screams of the crowd are undeniable. 

“Champion! Champion! Champion!” 

**Day 435**

Keith wouldn’t call this world-ending, but there’s a ricochet of pain moving down his spine, and there’s an alarm screaming warning in the back of his head, and all he can do is look at the source of it straight in the eye. Like he’s got Death’s number instead of the other way around. 

It’s the same interrogation room. Slate-gray walls with the panels placed so impeccably you’d need an inhumanly sensitive touch to find the seams. The table is still bolted down to the center, and Shiro is sitting opposite him. Around his Galra arm, that metal band creaks in protest with all the strain he’s exerting against it. 

Keith’s head pounds. He exhales shakily, never taking his eyes off Shiro. Beneath his cheek, something wet is pooling. He knows that he only needs to flick out his tongue to find that it’s blood. His, naturally. 

That’s just how this story is going at the moment. 

Maybe they should have considered Shiro’s other arm just as lethal as his Galra one. In all the weeks spent running footage past him, he’s never once made a violent gesture with it. He simply sat there with that vexing smirk over his lips like some goddamned Sphinx while they spent their time prying answers out of him. The responses he gave came all too easily. They just didn’t always answer the questions being asked. 

Riddle me this, or risk losing your head. 

When he breathes out, it fogs up white over the metal tabletop. He’s never seen snow. Not in person. It’s an odd thought to crop up at that moment, but the way the gray goes white looks like a dusting of it over mountain rock, and he wonders if those sorts of places get colder than the human heart. 

Shiro still has that smirk over his lips, clean-cutting, and Keith hates that he thinks there’s something sadly beautiful about it. Because that isn’t Shiro, and yet it is. 

“I told you I never stopped looking,” he says, watching as blood flecks the snowfield his breath keeps creating. “I couldn’t give up on you…” 

The smirk falters for a moment. 

“You should have.” 

“I can’t...” 

**Day 178**

He isn’t telepathic. But, some days, Keith wishes he was. It would have to be more than that though. He knows this. Because he doesn’t have that person in front of him, can’t stare into his eyes and dive into his thoughts. 

He can’t explain the things he has seen. 

But he tries. 

After all, what choice is left to those who have had nearly everything stripped from them? 

How do you stand someone before another living thing and tell them one or both will die, the choice is theirs? Was there some sort of constellation-worthy sacrifice inherent in choosing the latter? 

Perish then, and be exalted by the gods, oh noble souls. 

Keith can’t find fault for wanting to survive. He doesn’t want to pray to the heavens or wish upon the stars. He doesn’t want to play connect-the-dots using starlight and memories. What he wants is the feel of familiar skin beneath his hands, scar-lined and perfect, and the warmth of a smile known only to him. He wants life filling lungs, a heart hard-beating inside a chest — the proof of Shiro standing beside him. 

What he has is a handful of videos, a few bits of code chewed up by self-destruct protocols, and the promise of a champion’s future fights. 

**Day 452**

“Do you think he would die for you? This Shiro, the one we have now? Because from what I’m seeing here, it’s all you, buddy.” 

Keith narrows his eyes at Lance. He doesn’t blame him for the anger lashing out from those words, but damn, if it doesn’t ignite the desire to lash right back at him though. Even without Shiro being involved, it’s something of a knee-jerk reaction. At least when confrontation is the one drawing the lines between them. He’s saved from his own likely ill-worded retort by Allura stepping up and placing her hand gently over Lance’s elbow. 

“What he means is that we’re worried, Keith. We all are. After the last time...” 

She shifts her gaze to the side, unable to hold his while her words hang in the air between them. Like some piñata just waiting for someone to bash it in, spilling truth and assumptions all around them. Keith imagines them sitting there, the honest bits and all the presumed notions that tend to follow honest words, like tacks scattered across the floor, bound to hurt them all in the process of walking through to some sort of middle ground on the matter. 

As if there could be a middle ground when it came to Shiro. 

“I know what I’m doing,” he says after a breath, mouth pulling tight. 

Lance lets out a scoffing sound, all hard consonants and disbelief. “He had you by the back of your neck! And that was after he nailed you with his fist!” 

_“Shiro, I...”_

“You bled all over the table,” Hunk murmurs. He always looks like he has an apology loaded on his tongue during moments like this. As though being a friend, or just simply concerned, required one. 

Maybe it did when you were someone like him. When they all knew the subject matter, and that their worries may as well have been handing him a knife to cut free his own heart. But there are things they don’t know. Like the way Fate had already taken a part of that very heart and replaced it with a piece of another man’s, and how there were things he had said without saying them. 

_His lips moved, only those last three words didn’t find his voice. But they were formed, visible to Shiro alone, and Keith knew they had been seen. Because recognition had sparked in Shiro’s eyes, bright as a star’s death and beautifully pained._

There are things he had bled for, and not even worry could make him regret that. 

“I’m healed up now, aren’t I?” 

**Day 201**

“What are you thinking?” 

“About the order of things.” 

Kolivan lifts an eyebrow at that. “We’ve been over the order.” 

“I know,” Keith murmurs, defeat softening his tone. He’s traced the paths, lining up one galaxy after another trying to look for patterns, some hidden sequence in the movement of Shiro across the universe. 

There is none. Not even Hunk and Pidge could find a single rhyme or potential reason to explain the Galra’s movements. But Keith still keeps looking, like he did after the wreckage of their battle against Zarkon. He filters through the stars, tries to find hints on the dark sides of rogue moons, all to no avail. 

“Do you not think the answer obvious enough?” Kolivan asks. 

Keith can tell he had measured his words before speaking them. There’s a slightly longer delay between them, and if he had had a stopwatch to count down the ticks, he knows that much would have been obvious. 

He exhales softly and turns away from the control panel. A video sits paused on the screen, which throws a dull purple light over the various buttons below it. To the left side of it, a timeline runs down in sequential order, and below that, one in planetary order (which had been worked and reworked from systems conquered first then last, those with the greatest to the least rebellion influence, from order of discovery to population to Galra presence to believed importance to the war they were currently fighting... it went on and on, as months without answers often allowed for). 

“There has to be more to it,” Keith replies as his gaze meets Kolivan’s head-on. 

“Look at the screen, Keith, and tell me what you see.” 

It’s more of a command than Keith cares to hear, and in a fit of defiance, he continues to stare at Kolivan. He knows what’s on that screen. He’s watched it a thousand times since they recovered it two weeks ago, has seen it blossom in his dreams as they slip into nightmares. 

Kolivan breathes out, and with a shake of his head, he reaches past Keith and presses a button. Behind him, the roar of the crowd starts mid-chant, and all Keith has to do is close his eyes and he would see it all again. 

Shiro, standing there in the center of the arena, his arms outstretched and raised. 

“Sometimes knowledge leads to death,” Kolivan murmurs. 

**Day 463**

“I wasn’t going to be the last to fall,” Shiro says. He glances around the room, the sort of casual gesture that could displace any sense of fear, and shrugs. When he finally brings his gaze back to Keith, he does so with a smile that’s sharpened itself into a scythe’s curve. “I wasn’t going to fall at all.” 

It’s occurred to Keith over the weeks that he’s been back with Shiro that there are moments, just like this one, where the person he’s talking to isn’t Shiro at all. Rather, it’s like some alternate universe version of him. In some ways, he thinks that might very well be the case. He’s just as resilient as Shiro had been before he disappeared, full of fight and determination, but darker and unrepentant about all the jagged edges he has gained over the last year. Instead of trying to smooth those points over, he uses them as armor, each sharp edge leverage in this battlefield the world has become. 

It’s the unbecoming of Takashi Shirogane. 

Keith doesn’t know if he’s more or less of who he was before he disappeared, or just something else completely. 

“You don’t have to reason that with me, Shiro,” Keith replies after his nerves have settled. 

Shiro stares at him. Well, not so much as _at_ him but into him, through him. Looking so deep that Keith knows there is nothing in the darkness of him that Shiro cannot see. He breathes out, unable to help the small frown his lips start to form. 

“You know I’d rather have you here,” Keith says, far too quietly for his liking. He knows what admitting this means. “You did what you had to do... no one is blaming you for that.” 

When the corner of Shiro’s mouth twitches, his smile wavering just enough to dull the sharpness of it, Keith feels something roil in his gut. It’s unsettling. Watching as the humanity resurfaces in Shiro’s expression, surrounded by everything else he had become. It reminds Keith of the way people would rush to the desert during a super bloom only to pluck the flowers. They would then dry and press them, placing them inside of gilded picture frames, faded reminders of the phenomenon that had once been. 

“Huh. You definitely have a _way_ of showing it.” 

Keith blinks. He thinks he might have misheard. Not the words, but the tone behind them. But he sees it, that flicker in Shiro’s eyes like someone lit the fuse and, in a matter of seconds, the whole damn horizon would be on fire. Keith keeps watching, and the anger in Shiro’s gaze grows hotter. 

“What...” Keith pauses and licks his lips. “What’s that supposed to mean exactly?” 

As brilliantly as it had burned, it was gone. That anger. A single question from Keith, and it’s like Shiro remembered who he was and wasn’t all over again. Shiro looks around the training room, then down at his right arm. The smile from earlier starts to cut across his mouth once more, but before it can realize itself, it drops from Shiro’s lips abruptly. When he looks at Keith next, there’s an all-consuming pull to his gaze, the gray going summer-storm dark. 

“You’re not much different from them.” 

**Day 246**

He wants to stop this. 

The button is right there. One press of his fingertip and it will all be over. 

But Keith stands there, his heart balanced on a tightrope, unable to take the necessary steps forward. There’s nothing on the screen before him. Just a pale white glow flickering out from where an image should have been. But there is sound, and it loops over and over again, bringing it down around him. That reality he had been avoiding, the one he had been hoping against. 

“That’s not me. It’s not me. I’m not _that_. I’m not... broken.” 

The air clots in his lungs. His heart wavers, but it doesn’t plummet. And still Keith listens because it’s the first time he’s heard Shiro’s voice in months, and despite the pain it causes, he can’t silence it. 

“I’m not you. I’m not... like that. I’m not...” 

A heavy thud rings out from the audio followed by a murmuring of words indecipherable even if the agony within them isn’t. Keith grips the back of the chair until his knuckles go white, and still, the air doesn’t move in his chest, gelatinized and useless to him. The sound starts low, barely audible, but it builds and it builds until Keith can’t distinguish the cry of Shiro’s anguish from the screams of his own heart in free fall. 

**Day 481**

“It’s not your old room, but... it’s the best I could do.” 

When no answer comes, Keith simply watches as Shiro moves around the room like a house cat upgraded from a one-bedroom apartment to a luxury loft. There aren’t any windows here, no views into the vastness of space, but somehow, Keith gets the impression that such a sight might have been too much for the man before him. 

Shiro tugs at the sheets on his bed, lifts the pillow, then walks over to the small desk parked in the opposite corner and begins opening the drawers. A different sort of emptiness can be found in there, far different from the reaches of space. Keith wonders what Shiro might end up placing in there. Before he can trail that thought for too long, the silence around them is broken by Shiro dragging the chair from the desk and placing it in the center of the room. 

Surprise puts the silence right back into Keith. 

“Don’t you have more questions for me?” Shiro asks, looking ready to take a seat. He doesn’t quite make it there though. 

Maybe the expression Keith makes then is just that show-stopping. Shiro tilts his head to the side and purses his lips, his eyes searching Keith’s. Every corner, every hidden nook of thought that he can decipher from the things he sees there. And then, his brow furrows, and for a moment, Keith sees the confusion warring inside of Shiro. 

“You didn’t bring me here for that...” 

Keith nods. It feels like moving through a dream, where part of him exists but doesn’t, but he’s moving along all the same because that’s what he’s meant to do during this time and place. 

“I didn’t bring you here for that,” Keith confirms. His throat is dry, but his words... they feel like the first drops of rain on the desert floor. He lifts his gaze to meet Shiro’s again. “Welcome home, Shiro.” 

It all happens quick as lightning. One minute Keith is there, looking into the deep gray of Shiro’s eyes; the next, the air is rushing out of his lungs and there’s pressure around his throat. He coughs. His eyes sting. He doesn’t quite know why they do, but they do. 

Shiro stands in front of him, his chest heaving, a hand wrapped around Keith’s neck, and his eyes locked on Keith’s. They simply stand there, breathing in each other’s space, the warmth of Shiro’s fingertips making Keith ache in ways he shouldn’t right now. 

But he does. 

He’d forgotten what it felt like to be back in Shiro’s orbit, to have him look at him like he wasn’t some threat to his existence but something more. 

Like Keith was his inevitability. 

_This is the absolute gravity of you._ A sudden but well-known knowledge whispered by his heart, even as he struggles to breathe.

Shiro keeps staring into his eyes, and as the seconds tick down, his fingers gradually begin to loosen around his throat, though they never completely leave. He taps his index finger against the line of Keith’s jugular. 

Keith inhales raggedly, then parts his lips as his words flow between them, raw and honest. “I still believe in you, Shiro...” 

**Day 305**

There are many places Keith wants to be, but this is the one that needs him the most. That’s how it’s been these last few weeks, and, like it or not, it’s the reality of his life. 

“I think they’re really starting to get used to you,” Allura says, smile beaming across her face. 

She looks happy. Well, happier than they have been. Keith doesn’t want to hate her for that, but part of him finds it unforgivable. 

“Yeah! Now that we’ve got Voltron back, things are finally looking up again! I mean... it took a few tries and all...” 

“I think what Lance is trying to say, Keith, is good job,” Pidge supplies with a grin. 

“Yeah... good teamwork out there, guys.” 

It sounds lame. Fuck, it _is_ lame. And it does nothing to silence the pain echoing in his chest. Even so, Keith flashes a smile for them. 

“Everyone needed this, Keith.” Allura again, more gently this time. "The universe needed the Black Paladin."

He only nods, forcing another smile to his lips, then extricates himself from their hope with the excuse of needing a hot shower. 

**Day 506**

“They still don’t believe me, do they?” 

Shiro sits on the edge of his bed, his feet bare. Keith has spent the last minute counting each of his toes, just to make sure there are ten present, as there should be. He had counted ten the last time he had seen Shiro barefoot. Before his disappearance. 

Before all of this. 

“I think they’re uncertain. Shiro...” Keith sucks in a breath and falls back onto the mattress. There’s nothing but empty white ceiling above him, though it looks pale gray in the faint lighting of the room. “...Can I still call you that?” 

“Shiro?” 

“Yeah.” 

Laughter fills the air, and it warms something deep inside of Keith. It’s a lot like coming home to freshly dried towels after getting caught in a spring storm. 

“I honestly don’t know what else you would call me.” 

Silence fills in the space between them. Keith starts counting Shiro’s breaths, aligning his own with them. Another minute passes by with nothing more than that procession of numbers filling his head and Shiro alive beside him. 

Keith eventually pulls his gaze from the ceiling, moving it to where Shiro sits. “Is that what they called you?” 

Shiro’s spine goes rigid. His shoulders set. All around them, the air goes still as if they’ve been submerged. Keith doesn’t hold his breath though. Not anymore. 

“They called me 117-9875. She called me Kuro.”   
  
"And who are you now?"   
  
He'd been afraid to ask, but it's the question that's been plaguing him the most these last few weeks. Too often it felt like standing on shifting sands, never knowing where the next step might land him, if he'd make it back alive. The way Shiro could slip from one moment to the next has been unnerving, even if the frequency between those shifts is diminishing. Or maybe settling. What Keith knows now is that there's no going back to what they had been, but there exists the hope of finding something new. Even if he's the last one clinging to that potential.   
  
Besides, it's not as though he (or any of them) could claim to be the same person he was before Shiro had crash-landed back into his life. The memory of that desert night still burns bright within his memories, however. Reminding him of all the little things, the sorts that put aches into hearts. Whether it would burn it all down in the end...  
  
"I don't know, Keith." Shiro's voice is a small, tired thing. Scarred-down but not broken. "I'm not hers anymore. Not entirely. But, I'm not mine either..." Shiro flicks his gaze towards Keith, as if trying to anchor himself before the storm hit. "...I'm..."  
  
 _Yours_. The word doesn't leave his lips, however. But maybe that's been the inescapable truth between them, the one neither of them needs to voice.  
  
"You're here, Shiro. And that's all that matter now."

**Day 344**

There is a ticktickticking inside of his chest. 

It’s set the rhythm of his days, moving him forward in space to avoid the inevitable blast that would come from sitting still for too long. 

Memories can detonate. Dwell on them too long and you’ll end up mishandling something along the way. He knows this. And when they do, they’ll leave behind fragments of who you were until you barely recognize the person you had been. 

But he’s been counting down the days, waiting moment after moment for that one chance. It’s not about getting back to the earth, but about finding home again. He’s different from the others in that. 

“One month... you’re certain about that?” 

“He’s going to be there, Kolivan. Everything we’ve found points to that location, at that time.” 

There’s a ticking inside of his chest, and he’s been hunting leads for the better part of a year, but just like playing Russian roulette, at some point, a trigger pull will end the game. 


	2. Everglow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is the NSFW part — enjoy!

**Day 492**

He shouldn’t be here. 

Fuck, he shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Not like things could be the same when they aren’t…they aren’t. Keith is all too aware of that fact, but it hasn’t stopped the progression of this evening, and right now, he can tell himself he shouldn’t be here, but he is here. 

And much like a wish on a starless night, regret is nowhere to be found. 

He reaches down between his thighs, slides his fingers through short strands of dark hair, and lets out an unrepentant moan. 

“Shiro…” 

His breath catches on the last half of that name, threatening to release itself as a whine instead. 

When was the last time he touched himself? 

When was the last time he was touched? 

Large hands grip the insides of his thighs and push them further apart. His cock aches, but as much as he might want to touch it, he can’t. Not yet. If he does, this will all be over, and he doesn’t want this to end. How could anyone want this sort of thing to end… 

“Have you been thinking about this?” 

Keith sucks in a breath. As though possessing a mind of their own, his hips buck back against the fingers slipping between his ass cheeks. Shiro’s tongue has already made a wet mess of his hole, and without its warm presence, he feels oddly empty. The air too cool against his skin, his body feather-light without Shiro’s touch. 

“Shiro, c’mon…” 

“Have you?” 

It’s not that Keith doesn’t want to answer, but there’s that odd demanding edge to Shiro’s voice that consistently throws him off guard. Ever since introducing Shiro to his own room, Keith has noticed the odd swings back and forth as distrust battles against everything that Shiro had once been. One minute, he seems to sink back into the person he had known, then Keith will say something or a knock will ring out from the door, and suddenly, it’s armor plating over heart and steel doors closing on thoughts. 

And then there had been tonight. 

“I’ve thought about you…” Keith admits. Not just like this, but in general. In the ways he is the same and different, and how all of it seems to comprise the Shiro he has today. 

Shiro licks the tip of his cock. A shiver rockets up Keith’s spine. 

When he glances down between his legs, he finds Shiro wearing a Cheshire Cat grin, full of devious intent and misdirection. Nothing like the man he had been, and yet Keith finds it strangely alluring. This part of Shiro that seems to have unlocked itself while so much else got shut down behind closed doors. 

“I had dreams about you…” Shiro says, turning to study Keith’s cock like it’s some stellar example of what dreams should be. He gives a low appreciative hum as he drags the tip of his nose along the underside of it, causing Keith to shiver once more. “I couldn’t stop them. They would start up as I began to fall asleep…” 

“Dreams like this?” Keith asks, his voice threadbare. As weak as it sounds, it’s better than simply moaning, he thinks. 

Shiro nods. “And others. Everything always came back to you.” That grin tugs at his mouth again. Sharp and slick. Another flick of tongue, swiping clean a bead of precum this time. “I started to hate them.” 

When Keith shudders, he doesn’t know if it’s because of Shiro’s tongue or his words or some god-awful combination of both. 

“Then why are you —” 

He doesn’t get to finish that question. Just as he’s about to ask, something cool slides between his ass cheeks followed seconds later by a finger. The muscles of his left thigh jerk. Shiro’s hand settles over his hip and gradually begins to apply pressure, effectively holding him down. 

“I used to dream about you finding me.” 

“I did find you,” Keith grits out. God, he wants to fuck down against Shiro’s finger, but Shiro keeps a firm grip over him. Getting out of a steel trap would have been easier, that’s the impression that hold gives him. With a frustrated growl, he drops his head to the pillow. 

“Not exactly,” Shiro replies, voice smooth and cool as snowmelt. 

Keith’s head snaps back up again just as Shiro adds in a second finger. The moan finds his tongue before his reply does. Lips promptly shut down the sound. Keith can’t exactly hate himself for it, not when that pleased smile flickers over Shiro’s lips. Something genuine and warm. The sort of thing the best memories are based upon. 

“I’m the one who figured out the pattern…and I was there when they brought you up.” 

Shiro gives a noncommittal hum, his fingers moving smoothly in and out of Keith, working him open as though this was always going to be the way of things between them. That easy push-and-pull, all those forces of gravity and dedication, all of it bringing them back to one another. 

“You let me kiss you.” 

Keith breathes through another would-be moan. “We’ve kissed before.” 

Arching an eyebrow, Shiro glances up at him. He says nothing in reply, however, only adds in a third finger and watches as Keith’s lips pop open to release the moan he had long been denying himself. 

“You could’ve stopped me,” Shiro says. 

“You could’ve stopped.” 

Silence again. Shiro drops his head and brushes his lips against the inside of Keith’s left thigh. “I didn’t want to.” 

It’s not the sort of admission Keith expected to hear, but the quiet honesty of it is undeniable. Somewhere a memory stirs inside of him. Coupled with the softness in Shiro’s voice just then, it makes him ache in a completely different way. 

“Do you want more?” 

Keith doesn’t dare speak, but he nods and closes his eyes. The back of his head hits the pillow again, and for the moment, he simply allows himself to feel. The stretch of him as Shiro continues to finger him open. The warmth of Shiro’s breath against his thigh. The heavy wash of emotion flowing through his heart, into his lungs, drowning out his thoughts until all he can do is feel the way he has missed this man. 

How those little fissures open him back up to the Shiro he had once known. 

At the other end of the bed, he hears the rustle of sheets. It’s followed shortly after by the sharp click of a belt buckle, then the parting of metal teeth as a zipper is undone. Hands find his thighs again, fingertips electric against his skin. Keith arches his back as he takes in a deep breath, preparing himself, and then, there’s a hard, quick tug. 

Not what he had been expecting. 

His eyes open, head jerking up in one sharp motion that cuts through the pleasure fogging up his mind. 

“Shiro! What the —” 

The last of Keith’s words never find his throat, much less his tongue. With one of his legs now draped over Shiro’s shoulder, he can see that Shiro has situated himself squarely between his thighs. Shiro’s cock is erect, flush against his stomach, and if Keith tips his head just right, he can catch the slick sheen of lube glistening along the shaft. 

Shiro doesn’t hesitate. The moment their eyes meet, he leans in, pressing the head of his cock against Keith’s hole. With his weight behind the act, he pushes inside of Keith, a slow and steady sort of motion that has Keith clawing at the sheets beneath him. His lips part as a soft cry leaps from his throat, partially in surprise. The other part of that sound stems from something deeper inside of him, a need he has long suppressed for the sake of things greater than himself. 

“ _ Fuck _ , Shiro...” 

Another sound flees his throat, thin and desperate. 

With a quiet grunt, Shiro bottoms out inside of him. He’s never done it like this before, with nothing between them. No protection, no gentle words soothing him as his body accommodates something larger than three fingers. It’s not painful though. Not like those first few times when Shiro had talked him through the seconds, waiting patiently as he adjusted to the sensations coursing through his body until eventually all he knew was the sweet anticipation of being together with him. It was the pleasure remembered from those moments that made him ache all those months alone. 

Because it’s one thing to imagine the best you could have, and a whole different thing to have had it and lost it through no means of your own. He wasn’t the one who had lost Shiro. But like sand through some universal sieve, he had simply slipped through his hold. 

And now he’s here again. 

Keith tips his head back, exposing his throat and shutting his eyes. Memorizing the image of Shiro there between his thighs, a brightness to his gaze that whispers of the man he had been. That look burns a little hotter than it had before, a searing sort of thing that would have been worth going blind over. Shiro may have once been the sun of his universe, but fear of loss isn’t what drove him to close his eyes. 

He doesn’t want to forget this either. And maybe there’s a fear in that, something he doesn’t dare give voice to, but a thought nonetheless that sits there in the pit of his mind, built from their past. 

When Shiro begins to move, it’s not exactly like before. A little more insistent, a little more power from the start. He rocks Keith’s body forward with the first thrust back into him, earning a little gasp in return. There’s nothing rushed about it though. 

Not yet. 

Strength and control. That’s what Keith feels in the way Shiro moves. His hands are firm upon his body, one still gripping his hip, the other sliding down along his elevated leg, fingers slipping over his knee and down along his thigh. They linger there, pressing into muscle then easing back, coaxing relaxation out of Keith’s body until he gives a little more and Shiro thrusts in all the deeper. 

His eyes open when Shiro grunts, a deep satisfied sound that makes Keith want to see exactly what sort of expression he’s wearing. He had imagined it like something from his memory, pleasure softening Shiro’s features, though his brow would have the smallest little furrow. Like he was barely tethered to this moment and knew it. It’s a look Keith liked because it always meant Shiro was thinking about him, how to make it feel good for them both, but mostly…mostly for Keith. 

What meets his gaze instead is the intense stare of a predator. Shiro’s eyes are preternaturally bright, a silvery gray, all moonlight over snow. 

Keith can’t stop looking at him. His lips are barely parted, but even so, Keith can hear each breath as it rushes out of Shiro. Short, controlled bursts that gradually begin to grow more erratic the longer Keith keeps looking at him. Shiro still keeps the pace of his thrusting steady, however. It’s a bit maddening if you ask Keith, and in a fit of defiance, he tightens himself up around Shiro’s cock. 

“You don’t fuck like you used to,” he says. His voice is rawer than he cares for, but what’s the point of lamenting a bit of honesty when you’ve got someone’s cock buried inside of you? 

Shiro huffs out a laugh, then tips his head and bites the inside of Keith’s knee sharply enough to make him yelp. The laughter that spills out of him next is breathless, full of genuine amusement, and something so wretchedly pure that it makes Keith’s heart jump at the memory of it. Through it all, Shiro never stops looking at him, his eyes still carrying that strange light to them. 

Bright. Beautiful. 

It’s impossible to look away. 

“Don’t like it?” Shiro asks, that devious cut of a smirk over his lips once more. 

And now it’s Keith laughing. He unravels his fingers from the sheets and drapes his forearm across his face. With a shake of his head, he starts to smile. “No, Shiro…” 

He peeks beneath his arm to find Shiro smiling back at him. This isn’t how any of this was supposed to go. Shiro was never supposed to leave, and he was never meant to experience that loss again, and yet here they are, fucking to a rhythm that’s a little bit known and a whole lot of new, and somehow, it just seems to fit. 

Shiro brushes his lips over the mark left on the inside of his knee, and with it, starts to thrust into Keith more earnestly. His motions are easy, a fluid pumping of his hips that loosens the moans from Keith’s tongue. Above him, Shiro starts to breathe out in stutter-stopping pants occasionally broken up by a quiet grunt. 

“Feels good…” Keith murmurs, his words clipped by a gasp as Shiro jerks his hips forward. 

An apparent reaction to that admission. One that has Keith’s hole twitching tighter around Shiro’s cock until the man releases a deeply gratified moan. 

He watches as Shiro shuts his eyes, his lips still parted, now pressed lightly to his inner thigh. That furrow sits between his eyebrows, small but unmistakable. Before Keith can place the last moment he saw it, Shiro jerks his hips forward and his head drops forward. With his forehead to Keith’s thigh now, he breathes out harshly, “Keith…I’m…” 

The rest of that statement is lost to a moan as Shiro comes. Keith feels the twitching of Shiro’s cock as he unloads inside of him, and like a fuse lit, his own orgasm explodes across his body seconds later. He feels a warm splash over his stomach, his cock aching as he drags a hand down and pumps himself empty to the slow erratic thrusts of Shiro’s hips. 

Their eyes meet again. The gray in Shiro’s has darkened, not the riot-in-making it has been but no longer holding that strange shine either. Somewhere in between that makes Keith think of sunlight gilding the underbellies of storm clouds. Maybe there’s a promise to be seen in there. 

No words pass between them, but Shiro carefully lowers Keith’s leg from where it had been propped against his shoulder and slowly sinks down between his thighs. His cock is still inside, softening, and after another breath, he grunts and pulls himself out completely. Keith winces at the strange coolness left in the wake of Shiro’s cock, but before he can think further on the why, Shiro is moving up to align their bodies together. 

Like constellations finding their home skies again. 

“I dreamed of you,” Shiro murmurs, not quite kissing Keith but almost. 

Keith exhales softly. 

“You saved me.” 

Shiro’s words are quiet, whispered in a voice a little broken, all too human. 

Keith licks his lips, wishing his heart back into beating. “We saved each other.” 

  
  
  
  



End file.
